My Family for the War

by Anne C. Voorhoeve

  “Well, now that the war is over and Germany has been liberated, naturally we have to consider what should happen to you,” Mrs. Lewis informed me.

  Unsettled, I sank deeper into the living room sofa. She sat across from me, her purse on her lap. “Have you had news from your mother?” she wanted to know.

  I shook my head. “My uncle went to Holland ten days ago to look for her, but we haven’t heard anything yet.”

  “You can also start a search through the Red Cross. I brought the form with me.” Mrs. Lewis reached into her purse and retrieved the paper. “Of course, this is only if your uncle isn’t successful,” she added quickly.

  “Of course,” I murmured, and “thank you.”

  “You’re finishing secondary school this summer? We’re so pleased, Frances. You are one of our success stories! We brought thousands of children out of Germany, but unfortunately not all of them were as lucky as you, I’m sad to say.”

  “Mrs. Lewis,” I interrupted, “why are you here?”

  She gave me an unexpectedly hard, scrutinizing look. “You know that your stay in England was meant to be temporary. No one will deport you, even if the danger is past now. You practically grew up here in England. But if your mother is still alive and is waiting for you in Germany, that of course raises questions.”

  The shock ran through my whole body. “I’m not going back to Germany. Never!”

  “Calm down, Frances. As I said, we’re not sending you back unless your mother demands it. And that’s why we’re also eager to find out whether she’s alive. We need to know if we are still responsible for you, or whether you still have family.”

  “I have family,” I said with a quivering voice. “The Shepards.”

  “I believe you know what I’m talking about, Frances,” Mrs. Lewis responded. She placed the form on the table between us and pushed it toward me.

  “You knew about it, right?” I asked after she had left.

  Leaning on the doorframe I watched Amanda cut vegetables at the kitchen table. “That your mother can demand that you return?” she replied without turning toward me. “What’s new about that?”

  “But don’t you think I’m old enough to decide for myself? If Mamu wants to have me back, she has to come to me. After all, she’s the one who sent me away.”

  “Heavens. You still hold that against her?” Amanda finally looked upset, even though it wasn’t on my account, but Mamu’s. I immediately felt betrayed.

  “I don’t resent it,” I protested. “But she certainly lost the right to make decisions about me when she did. I decide, me alone, and that’s exactly what I’ll tell her.”

  My foster mother, the mother I had chosen, looked straight at me and like a flash, the memory was there… the seconds of our first encounter, the look of this intelligent, friendly face. Now there was so much more in it, the past six years, the war, Gary’s death, our shared history.

  “Don’t be afraid.” I wasn’t even sure if she had said it out loud. “Don’t plan what you want to say. When you see her, you’ll know. Only then.”

  The Red Cross missing persons form consisted of just a few lines, the first of which was the hardest to fill in. Name of the missing person. My pen hovered above it for several minutes. Days, actually, if you counted the time I had needed to actually look at the form Mrs. Lewis had left, and use it.

  Rebekka Liebich. I sighed with relief when it was finally done. The rest was quick. Born on December 8, 1927, last known residence in Berlin-Neukölln, Silbersteinstraße, with her parents, Susanna and Hermann Liebich. There were a few lines for “other information” where I filled in four words that looked like a plea: probably in the Ruhrgebiet, question mark. I stuck the form in an envelope, sealed it, and added a stamp before I lost my nerve.

  The other letter lay under the desk blotter, the one we had awaited for such a long time and had arrived the day before yesterday, about three weeks after Uncle Erik left.

  Groningen, 26 May 1945

  Dear Ziska,

  Sadly I don’t have good news. The ladies could only hide Margot and Ruth until October due to drastic food shortage. Next stop KZ Westerbork, all else unknown. Don’t lose hope. The Red Cross is still listing people who were freed from the camps. Have registered their names and wait for a reply. Will contact you immediately.

  Uncle Erik

  I had withdrawn to my room with the letter and read those few sentences again and again until I thought I could hear Uncle Erik’s voice, and when the tears finally came, they were for him. He can’t take this, not again! Don’t keep him waiting. Let it have an end.

  Since Gary’s death I had avoided asking God or Jesus for anything. I would have liked to pray for Uncle Erik to find Mamu and Aunt Ruth alive and well; I would have liked to feel I was doing something for him that way. But I couldn’t. What had happened, had happened. I didn’t believe in an all-powerful God anymore. He had to watch everything unfold, every evil plan, every single murder. Suddenly I knew what I could pray for.

  If you are a compassionate God, then have mercy on Uncle Erik. Don’t abandon him. Stay with him and give him strength.

  The telegram came a few days later. Margot lives. Love and hugs. More soon. Uncle Erik.

  Chapter 23

  A Phone Call

  Mrs. Collins would have to throw away her world map. When the students returned to school after the summer holiday, they would be dealing with different borders, and a few small countries would disappear from the map entirely. Hitler’s grip of the countries around Germany had been thwarted, but the victorious powers had their own plans for Europe.

  Everywhere, people launched the bitter search for their relatives that might last years, and often in vain.

  Groningen, 24 June 1945

  Dear Ziska,

  At last I can give you the details. On the 9th of June I found your mother in a camp called Belsen in the Lüneburger Heide. The Red Cross had her name on a list of survivors who had been treated in a hospital after the liberation. It was difficult to get permission to take her to Holland, but personal contacts to the British occupying forces—Corporal Lightfoot!—helped move things along fairly quickly after all. From Westerbork they were both taken directly to Auschwitz and in January, just before the liberation by the Red Army, were put on a train headed for Germany. Bergen-Belsen wasn’t an extermination camp; the people died of hunger and typhoid, as did your aunt Ruth on 4 April 1945. Yes, Ziska, your aunt, my wife, is no longer alive. But she died believing that our daughters were safe.

  I don’t know if you and I will ever learn more. Your mother doesn’t talk about it. I definitely don’t see an opportunity to bring up the question of the future. It does your mother good to be in Holland, and every day she makes a little progress in eating, gaining weight, and feeling better on the whole. Slowly she seems to be coming back to life.

  Be patient. I see that she’s started a letter to you, but I don’t think she wants you to come right away and see her like this.

  “Why don’t you come outside, Frances? I’ve set out the little table for you, you can bring your schoolbooks and study there.”

  I looked up. As so often since my accident, pains pounded and bored into my head and it took a few seconds for my eyes to change focus from the tiny letters in the math book to Amanda’s face.

  For days now, my foster parents had been walking on eggshells around me, waiting patiently, giving me time. I had no idea why that didn’t help, why it only intensified my feeling of being utterly alone.

  Amanda’s move with the table was the first attempt to get me to do anything, and it seemed harder to find an argument against it than to just do her the favor. Without another word I packed up my books and papers and followed her.

  It was as if my life had been interrupted the moment I read Uncle Erik’s letter; as if I had to see my mother, talk with her, receive some word from her before I could inhale again. I had to look at a photograph to remember her face, and even that didn’t shut out
those other images that wanted to get in the way now. Amanda withdrew to the backyard while I sat on the bench with my books. She had set out juice and a piece of cake for me, but left me alone.

  I glanced over at her and saw her quick hands digging, snipping, planting seedlings. The neighbors couldn’t get over how quickly our garden was recovering under Amanda’s green thumbs. “What’s she using, Frances?” Mrs. Beaver pestered me. “Coffee grounds? Something from the toilet?”

  “Nothing but love,” I said. “That and a little stinging nettle tea.”

  I squinted at Amanda over my book, wishing with all my heart that she’d come over and take me in her arms—if only so that I could push her away.

  I’ll go crazy if Mamu doesn’t write soon, I thought.

  “What would you think of driving to Southend tomorrow?” Matthew suggested on Friday.

  We looked at him with astonishment. “What are you talking about?” I asked indignantly. “It’s Shabbat. We only drive in an emergency.”

  “We’re going to have an emergency on our hands if we don’t lure you away from your books soon! I’ve already talked with the Beavers. They’ll drive us and stay there for a few days; we’ll take the train home on Sunday and be back in the afternoon in time for work.”

  Southend, of all places, across the channel from Belgium and Holland! The barricades had been dismantled, the same little waves rolled calmly and cheerfully onto the beach, and people walked along the promenade as if it had never been otherwise.

  No sooner did he step out of the car than Matthew was overcome by his scruples after all. Setting aside that little white lie with the “emergency,” Shabbat was expressly not for pleasure, but was reserved for spiritual reflection. Now the fresh sea breeze apparently threatened to be such a great pleasure for my foster father that he didn’t dare take off his coat!

  Amanda and I stood in front of his lounge chair in our summer dresses and looked down at him doubtfully.

  “We want to get postcards and an ice cream—will you come with us?”

  “No, I don’t want to touch any money on the Sabbath. Just let me sit here and read a little.” He squinted under his hat in the sunlight and stretched out his legs to make it look like he was comfortable. I imagined that he was already boiling hot in his black shoes.

  “He’ll turn the chair around as soon as we’re gone,” Amanda whispered.

  We stopped a short way off and watched with curiosity, and sure enough: Matthew stood up, stomped through the sand with his coat billowing, and pushed the lounge chair into the position with the least attractive view possible. Then he wearily sank back into it and took out his prayer book. As reluctantly as I had come along myself, it was touching that he went through all of this for my sake.

  At the postcard kiosk we looked for a card for Walter, but I knew what Amanda was really thinking. “Do you think your mum might like these?” she asked, making her voice sound as casual as possible.

  “Mamu,” I corrected her. “Try not to confuse the two of you, please!”

  She smiled apologetically and held out the card, an image of the famous pier that stretches more than a mile out into the water. On the other side was the coast of Holland. It couldn’t possibly have been more obvious. “One of you should finally make the first move,” Amanda declared, and paid for the postcard.

  I didn’t say anything. I knew she was right; I even thought that Mamu probably hadn’t written yet because she was having the same trouble with those “first words” that I was. Nothing would be simpler than starting with an ordinary holiday postcard.

  Nonetheless, I launched into protest as soon as Amanda pushed the card across the table toward me in the ice cream parlor. “Why do I have to be the one to take the first step?” I blurted. “If I was important to her, Mamu would have gotten in touch a long time ago.”

  “If there is such a thing as hell on earth, then your mother has been there,” Amanda said quietly. “She might still be there now.”

  “I can’t help her,” I muttered in the direction of the water.

  “I think you can.”

  “Have I told you why she sent me to England all by myself?” I gave my foster mother a cool look. “Mamu and I could have emigrated to Shanghai; we had all the paperwork in order, including passage for the ship. But Papa was still in Sachsenhausen, and she chose to be separated from me rather than him.

  “I was ten years old,” I said hoarsely. “I would rather have died than go alone, and she knew that.”

  “Frances! To be confronted with a decision like that, you can’t seriously blame her for that!”

  “We weren’t as close as you think we were. Papa always came first, he was wonderful.” My voice failed and for a few seconds I couldn’t speak. “It was the best decision she could have made,” I finally admitted. “But now I’m here and she’s over there.”

  Amanda folded her hands over the menu and said nothing. I was glad when the waitress came over to our table. But I should have known better—once the topic had been raised, Mum wouldn’t let me off the hook.

  “Honey, I have a feeling that you’re trying to tell me that you’re finished with your mother,” she said right to my face.

  I was shocked. “No… How can you say that? I think about her, I’m worried, I…”

  “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You can’t just go about your business anymore. It’s time to settle it.”

  “To settle what?”

  “Whatever it is that stands between you two. What you’ve been carrying around with you for six years. There are things that become more significant the more you try to convince yourself they don’t exist.” She leaned forward and looked at me intently. “If I was sure you could be happy without your mother, I would do everything in my power to make things stay just the way they are. But I’m not sure. You’re not sure. That can’t just be ignored.”

  “That’s true. You’d rather ignore that you’re my mother now. You’d prefer to erase the past six years. And I thought we had something special.”

  “Oh, love. We did. We still do! That’s exactly what I was about to say. When you look back on these six years, if you take away the nights of bombing, the fear for your parents, and Gary, and Matthew, your accident, Gary’s… Gary’s death…” I could see how the word stuck in her throat. “Wouldn’t you agree that it was actually a happy time?” she asked bravely. “You were my daughter, and I was very, very happy to be your mum. We depended on each other, we were there for each other.”

  Strange. Those were the words I had always longed to hear, but instead of being glad, something hot formed a ball in the pit of my stomach. “We have nothing to feel guilty about,” Amanda went on, and I suddenly knew where she was headed.

  “No, Mum!” I heard myself say in an entirely foreign voice.

  “We love each other enough that we don’t always have to be together. No matter where you are, we can’t lose each other anymore. That goes for Matthew too.”

  “Stop!”

  “We’re not sending you away, Frances. We just want to tell you that you’re free to go and win your mother back.”

  I jumped up. “Be quiet!” I screamed at her, as loudly as I could. Heads turned at the other tables.

  But Amanda actually put it into words. “My dear, if there’s anyone you’re really finished with, it’s me and Matthew.”

  On the last day of secondary school there was a small celebration in the auditorium. We were simply called forward to receive our diplomas, and our teacher spoke a few warm words about each person’s plans for the future. Parents I didn’t know applauded politely, we crowded together on the school steps for a group photograph, there were hugs and solemn promises not to lose touch with each other. And then the endless wasteland of the long summer holiday before college lay before me.

  My foster parents waited with the other parents around the edge of the schoolyard. “That was lovely,” Amanda observed. Since we had gotten back from Southend, we had made it a firm
policy to be relaxed with each other. To celebrate the day, they took Hazel and me to the Bardolo, a sinfully expensive kosher restaurant in Westminster. My friend met us there, gave everyone a kiss on the cheek, and even as we sat down, the latest hilarious stories from her new life as a telephone operator bubbled forth.

  When we were alone, Hazel listened intently as I poured my heart out. I told her what Amanda had done in Southend, that I had been so upset that I ran out of the ice cream parlor and paced up and down the beach and the pier until nightfall. That Matthew, instead of taking my side, had only said how awful it still was for him and Amanda that they had had to break off contact with their parents and families in order to be together.

  I told her that I had just walked away from him. And the next day we left right after breakfast and I had to continue pacing in the train so I wouldn’t have to sit in the same compartment with people I was through with.

  “Well,” Hazel remarked when I was finished. “She could have put it more delicately.”

  “Were you listening to me at all? Amanda dismissed me from being her daughter! What difference does it make how she put it?”

  We sat in the late afternoon sun on the terrace of one of the ruins on Harrington Grove that were overgrown with grass and brush. I found the weather-beaten handle of a knife on the ground near me and carved a groove in the stones as I dangled my legs over the wall.

  Hazel leaned against the side wall. “I don’t think Amanda dismissed you,” she said thoughtfully. “I think she just wanted to say that you don’t have to feel obligated to them. Does she know what you promised Gary?”

  “No,” I replied sullenly, and poked around with my knife.

  “What did you expect?” Hazel persisted. “That your mother would arrive and move in with the Shepards, preferably along with Uncle Erik and Walter?”

  I pressed my lips together. I didn’t see what would have been so wrong with that!